New Delhi: A preliminary paper by Arvind Virmani, economist and member of federal think tank NITI Aayog, has concluded that India’s school system produces certificates that do not reliably signal learning, and that the Right to Education (RTE) Act, meant to improve access to quality education, has actually worsened learning outcomes.
Furthermore, several of India’s wealthiest states are moving backwards on foundational learning skills, the paper suggests. With respect to government vocational institutions, fewer than half of ITI graduates and less than a third of polytechnic graduates can be considered employable.
Published in March, the paper—titled ‘Education and Skilling for Employment: From Credentials to Learning Outcomes’—is a data-intensive assessment of India’s education system, whose findings conflict the narrative of progress that has accompanied both the RTE and the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
Its introduction says: “Education cannot be measured by the certificates issued for primary school, lower secondary school and upper secondary school, if they merely indicate the number of years spent in school, if the majority of students don’t have minimum proficiency in reading and arithmetic.” Such certificates, it adds, “do not necessarily create human capital”.
The paper paints a curious picture of Indian education. It says that given the country’s significant population, India’s tertiary educated adult population (those who have done their higher education like Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees) is “the second-highest in the world after China”. Meanwhile, in rural areas, 42 percent of Class 6, 36 percent of Class 7 and 29 percent of Class VIII students cannot read a Class 2-level text, and 64 percent in Class 6, 59 percent Class 7 and 54 percent in Class 8 cannot do mathematical division.
The author further cautions that it will be a big challenge for Indian states to meet the NEP 2020 goal of 100 percent Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN), the 2025 deadline for which has already passed.
To create a picture of learning outcomes in India, the paper has used data from the latest versions of various surveys—including Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), National Achievement Survey (NAS), Foundational Learning Study (FLS) and PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan (PRS) from 2006 to 2024. To draw international comparisons, data from World Bank, World Development Indicators (WDI) was used. Both private and government institutions have been included in the study.
The author, Arvind Virmani, is a macro economist who played a prominent role in the economic reforms of the 1990s and 2000s, and had earlier served as executive director of International Monetary Fund (IMF), chief economic adviser, Ministry of Finance, and principal adviser, Planning Commission.
Though published as a ‘NITI Working Paper’, the paper carries a disclaimer that the views expressed are personal.
RTE indictment
The most politically sensitive finding in the paper is its assessment of the RTE law. Passed in 2009 under the UPA government and never substantially amended by subsequent administrations, the RTE established free and compulsory education as a fundamental right while mandating minimum standards, higher pay scales, and administrative requirements for all schools—government, private-aided, and NGO-run alike.
The paper through survey data (ASER reports 2006, 2010, 2018) shows that the post-RTE period (2010–2018) coincided with accelerating declines in learning. In Class 3, while arithmetic skills were already dipping, the share of children who could subtract dropped by another 8.3 percentage points after RTE. In Class 8, minimum reading proficiency fell by over 10 percentage points in the post-RTE years. Arithmetic in lower secondary school dropped even more sharply.
“RTE seems to have had a broadly negative impact on learning outcomes, affecting both minimum reading proficiency and minimum proficiency in arithmetic. While the pre-RTE period (2006–2010) showed declines with stability in a few grades, the post-RTE years (2010–2018) showed greater declines in most grades,” the paper says.
The author also mentions the factor of school closures due to the RTE Act. The RTE’s “strict” compliance requirements—on teacher qualifications, infrastructure, and fees—proved unworkable for low-cost private schools and NGO-run institutions that served poor families.
Data collected by the National Independent Schools Alliance, cited in the paper, shows that by October 2016, over 9,300 private schools had received closure warnings; 7,898 had received actual closure notices; and 3,332 had already shut down—and these are numbers drawn from just three states.
The paper states in a footnote: “This was partly due to a reduction of students, due to the closing of NGO/NPO schools.”
‘Money does not improve learning’
The paper’s inter-state analysis is direct in its implication for education spending. Across Indian states, there is no correlation between a state’s per capita income and its primary school learning outcomes. The correlation between state per capita net domestic product and minimum reading proficiency in Grade 5 is 0.16. For arithmetic, it is negative: -0.08.
“There is no evidence that variation in school infrastructure, teacher pay, or subsidies to child’s family, improve learning at primary and lower secondary levels,” the paper states.
Pupil-teacher ratios improved between 2018 and 2024—primary school ratios dropped from 27 to 20—and the share of trained teachers rose by over 20 percentage points at the primary level. Neither had a statistically significant effect on whether children could read or do arithmetic. The correlation between pupil-teacher ratios and minimum arithmetic proficiency across states was 0.03; for minimum reading proficiency it was -0.09. The paper uses 2024 state-level Pupil Teacher ratio data from UDISE+ (Unified District Information System for Education Plus), and correlates it against 2024 ASER learning outcome data across states.
The international evidence the paper cites reinforces this. In Indonesia, an increase in a teacher’s salary produced no improvement in student learning across mathematics, language, or science after three years, “despite increased teacher satisfaction, reduced financial stress, and fewer second jobs among teachers”. The paper cites the researchers’ explanation: “In public-sector systems with high job security and weak accountability, unconditional pay hikes are unlikely to raise productivity.”
What does work, the paper argues, is pedagogy. Specifically, teaching at the right level—grouping children by their actual learning level rather than age or grade—and structured, repeated testing to identify and support children falling behind.
(Edited by Viny Mishra & Gitanjali Das)
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